During social gatherings, people often consume food and drink while standing or walking around. In these settings, people may find it difficult to hold a plate for food in one hand and a cup for a drink in the other while also engaging socially. With both hands occupied the person cannot shake hands, open doors, or use their cell phone. It can also be difficult for the individual to eat when one hand is occupied holding a drink, and the other hand holds a plate. With both hands occupied, it becomes difficult to socialize without putting down either the food or drink. Furthermore, there can be limited places for individuals in social gatherings to place their food or drink.
Some variations of combination plate and cup holders have been created to address this problem. Many of these variations have tried to meet the same basic goal. This goal is creation of a plate with an attached cup holder, which is easy to hold, and can be placed on a flat surface without the plate or drink tipping over. The existing variations fail to meet one or more features of this goal.
One example is Farrell U.S. Pat. No. 3,115,251 disclosing a “plate and cup holder” having a base supporting a plate and peripheral cup holder extending above the base. When in use, the drink is balanced on top of the base of the invention, with a band encircling the top of the cup to hold it in place. The design is not easy to hold as it has no natural hand-grip. Instead the user must hold the plate from underneath, with their fingers straight and palm up, or with their thumb above the base and the rest of their hand below it. This is no easier to hold than a normal plate and the weight of the drink added to that of the plate makes the plate and cup holder awkward and unwieldy to grip.
Another example is Crawford U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/138,986 disclosing a “combined plate and cup holder,” having a plate with a peripheral, collapsible cup holder extending below the plate. The collapsible cup holder telescopes closed such that the entire device can sit on a flat surface without tilting. However, this design may be difficult to grip, as the telescoping cup holder may collapse closed when grasped independently from the plate. In fact, there is no natural hand-grip and the user holds the device from the edge of the plate, or underside of the plate. Additionally, Crawford does not address the problem of the drink tipping when the plate is set on a flat surface. When the plate is set down, the cup holder telescopes closed, such that the drink extends above the surface of the plate, with no substantial sidewall to prevent tipping and spilling of the drink. Thus, movement of the plate could easily displace, and spill the drink.